


Red Water

by VantageGuard



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, ~dragons are dramatic and so am I~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 16:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13768518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VantageGuard/pseuds/VantageGuard
Summary: My reinterpretation of That One Scene from Future Past 3. Obvious spoilers for the whole game.





	Red Water

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! If you're taking the time to read this then please note the following:
> 
> -I was initially going to stick to the canon script but found it a bit inflexible and cheesy, so I tweaked it a bit. The main gist should still be there (as well as some cheese I'm sure...)  
> -I consider the "graphic depictions of violence" to be on the lighter side but you know there's a heads up just in case  
> -Chrom and (male)Robin are going to be the focus here. You can read their relationship as platonic or romantic, whatever you like best!  
> -Emmeryn stays dead in this one, sorrynotsorry!  
> -This fic assumes that Chrom's army visit the outrealms before challenging Grima in their own world. I'm thinking post chapter 23 at the earliest  
> -The bulk of this was written at ungodly hours in the morning and is a _bit_ self indulgent.....I love emotional pain and dramatics okay I'm sorry (/v\ )
> 
> This thing has been sitting on my hard drive for...you don't want to know how long actually. After revisiting and fiddling around with it enough that it feels finished I figured I might as well do something with it. I've never posted a fanfic publicly before so uh......be kind? Thanks for clicking regardless!

The great dragon shrieked above the ruined Ylisstol palace, sending a sharp echo to bounce about the shattered white stone. It twisted sorely above them, pained from a wound that, Chrom admonished, was not deep. Much too light.

He considered the duel and its awkward disengage, knowing now he would have to begin again from zero and work to entice another hard-won opening. He silently cursed his innate hesitance. Brief though it was, it was long enough for Grima's avatar to lean that last centimeter out of fatal range; very much a veteran reflex. Falchion made grisly work of the body's left side but ultimately found itself veering at a wrong angle to cleave anything truly vital, earning no victory, only the dragon's thunderous wail and a short bloody spray. The avatar had screamed too, though it was easily drowned out by his second behemoth-like body writhing overhead. It had been enough to shake Chrom from his stance, after all, preventing him from further melee and a chance at easy redemption for his mistake. The bloodied vessel stumbled backwards while Chrom took a moment to heave and gasp.

That hesitance would cost him; he knew this also. It wasn't like he could blame the dragon skin. The Falchion rendered it next to useless. No, it was all on him. He knew where Robin was; commanding from the center, Cordelia and Lon’qu on personal guard, avoiding an accident. They still had their own dragon to slay. _Oh, that's right_. Chrom would have to do this again once he was through here: face the ugly patchwork of a _something_ not unlike what stood and bled mere meters from him now. Three strides from sword's distance.

One more slice like that would do it, probably.

_Stay calm. Do not be rash._

That _something_ was the bane of life and sanity, the ruin in their children's future, all horribly stitched onto what remained of a brilliance he knew like his home. The ground at his feet. The wind at his back. _Gods, you have to do this twice_. But it could hardly be called a brilliance now.

There wasn't much left of him, was there? _No. Not him. Stop it._ Grima's avatar panted grossly, clutching at a cloak long torn and faded and stained with gore (to which Chrom could only imagine the many origins of), his own fell blood leaking out to accompany the handy work. Where was the royal purple he remembered? _At our center where you left him, where else!?_ He was now fixing Chrom with a glare both hateful and incredulous.

Red.

A patch of scales facing the sharp twilight glinted against a pallid cheek, absent of a desert-born tan. Chrom had a small moment to notice the almost gray complexion. He wondered how something could exude such terror while looking so sickly. Unannounced and unwarranted, he felt a twinge of worry, but violently forced it down. _He isn't there! You know where he is and you know he's fine! You only just saw him! Focus!_

"HOW?! This is not YOUR WORLD... YOU SHOULD NOT be able TO DRAW UPON this kind OF POWER!"

The dragon's shrieks had now receded to a low rumble weighing on the air, but its vessel spit loudly and vehemently, his voice oscillating between the layered thrum that denoted his divinity and that of a single frenzied man. Winking red. Chrom let a breath pass through him, heavy and deep, eyes locked forward as he flexed his fingers then tightened his grip on Falchion's hilt. He couldn't miss a second time.

Determined, he lunged forward. The avatar raised a hand. An ebon spike, sharp like glass and crystal no longer than an ink quill, erupted from the dusty floor. It pierced straight through Chrom's foot, effectively nailing him in place. Stride thrown, he crashed down onto his arms and knees. The abrupt tug and fierce pain nearly flung Falchion from his hands. He let out a cry, of surprise primarily, but shut it quickly behind his teeth. Dimly, he heard the avatar crow a sound in vengeance.

_Dammit! DAMMIT! FOCUS!!_

He tore it free. Stumbled back into a stance, did his best to ignore the ripping and any urge to wince. But Grima was already there, forcing him back down with a blade in his face. Laughter.

Red. It glinted from behind the raised hood and tangles of bone white hair.

Red and red and wrong.

"...Patience. I am NOT FINISHED with YOU YET."

A three inch floor spike and Chrom was forced into check. Grima could have done that at any time, Chrom realized. Immobilized him with the flick of a wrist. Could even have saved his avatar the bloody gash that was _still too damned shallow_. But no, of course; Grima liked to play with his food.

It was sloppy — an odd thing to suddenly conceive, surely, but it struck Chrom as distinctly bizarre. He was used to dealing with...layers. The avatar had only dole out the simplest of blows and merely reacted to Chrom's, with no attempt to lure him into moves that might yield openings. They were frighteningly powerful, yes, but that was all. The situation seemed backwards.

And then he remembered. Or rather, then it clicked at last.

 _Not him_.

It was more finalizing than it should have been given all his mental prep work. Chrom almost laughed at his own simplicity. He could attempt to convince himself of all the hard truths he wanted, but for him there had never been anything more absolute than the physicality of crossing swords. Of sight, touch, and substance.

It was the same with Emm. He just couldn't bring himself to believe she was gone until the evidence was shoved right in front of him, broken and rotting as it was — there had been no opportunity to retrieve her until after the war. But before? As far as Chrom was concerned, after her fall Emmeryn had simply stood up, maybe shook off the dust, and perhaps walked home. That made more sense to him at the time. She just walked it off the minute he was forced to turn around, Robin dragging him backward and the frantic, " _We need to go. We need to go...Chrom, please!_ " Lissa had been wailing. She wouldn't look at Chrom, wouldn't look at anyone, really. She just buried her head into the cold hardness of Frederick's armour. Frederick, their steadfast partisan. His face was rigid and hollow as he rode, eyes stubbornly set forward. Chrom recognized their distress at the time, but it seemed to him only in periphery, largely unurgent. They were sad, but Chrom wasn't sad. He only remembered being angry. _We need to get her back_ , he thought, and they were taking him away. He was simple like that. Immature. Perhaps a little slow. And the realization of it had always stung. It still stung.

Too late. Too shallow. No room to redeem or to mourn. Here was the moment he would pay for his hesitance.

Grima sneered and the waning light danced about the scales. The blade was another spike, Chrom saw now, only molded like a blade and protruding from the avatar's left hand, resting now at Chrom's throat. The right hand he then extended to Chrom's face, cupping the cheek and smoothing it with a pointed thumb. Like admiring a lover. Or petting a dog. The palm buzzed faintly with magic. Enjoying the position, Grima leaned in close, the smile stretching wide.

Red red red.

"No matter HOW YOU STRUGGLE..." Chrom felt the vibrations intensify, could smell only rot. A growing sensation of heaviness and numbing seeped into him, like slowly freezing without any cold. The wound in his foot felt the same. "...I WILL see you DESTROYED!"

Chrom clenched his jaw in preparation for the spell's impact and lowered his gaze, leaving the avatar's for the first time. He prayed that Grima was not yet done playing with him. If things went well he'd lose an eye at most. Probably. Ideally. Bearable, he told himself. He only needed one to aim a sword swing. Lissa could fix eyes, right?

He braced himself. There was a sudden crack; sparks fell around his knees and the palm grew hot. The buzzing turned erratic and loud, punctuated by proximity. Chrom shut his eyes and waited.

 

...

 

Nothing.

No release, no laughter, no pain. The seconds ticked by and still nothing. _Why is he waiting?_ Chrom felt the palm slowly cool and the buzzing quiet. _Has someone stopped him?_ The blade threatening him began to quiver and retreat. Actually, the whole body was retreating. The dragon was silent. Chrom raised his head. And expecting blood and crimson and all that accursed _red_...

...he found the earth in a rainstorm.

Robin regarded the world through brittle hairs and shining scales from under the hood of his ruined cloak and sobbed with the physical exhaustion of someone who had crawled out of the sea. His focus was just past Chrom's head at the ensuing clash of risen and soldiers. For a while he could watch nothing else. Seemed to hear nothing else but the scraping of steal and the hissing undead, the familiar calls for backup, screams of pain, and hollers of triumph. A Shepherd’s culling. He looked on with both disbelief and sorrow. This Robin had probably resigned to never seeing the like of it again.

And then he looked at Chrom.

And he looked like he had been drowned. Like he had been drowning for years.

And, heartbreakingly, he looked like he understood in that moment, despite it all. Because of course he did. Robin always knew, especially when Chrom didn't. This was not his dry land. Only a short relief in the shallows before the angry, wrathful, unforgiving depths rose up and claimed him again.

Robin stood in front of him. And Chrom had looked nowhere else.

"... _Run._ "

 

 

 

 

"...What?"

Because what else can you say? After finally throwing your hope away when you had clung to it for so long, what else is there, in the face of having been right for once? Right about _this?_ Like finding the lost key to the home you watched burn? There should only be ashes. Only ashes and dust and black grief.

"...Chrom...you have to..."

_He was in there the whole time._

_He was still in there._

_You have to do this twice._

"...you...have to run."

"Robin, what are you saying?" Breathing hard. He had to move. More than ever before. _He was right there._ "No...no, let me help I can-"

" _There's no time!_ " Pleading now.

This couldn’t be a trick, right? Chrom was reeling to stand. A new wave of adrenaline shot through him, mercifully disregarding anything happening with his foot, but he was sick with revelation. Lightheaded and dizzy and desperate. And Robin was shaking his head and backing away.

 _Too late_.

"You won't die again. I can't–" he broke off. Robin squeezed his eyes briefly against the torrent, regaining his composure enough for a tired smile, forced and wavering. It was one Chrom had seen a thousand times in the late nights and early mornings, at bedsides in the med tent, settling in the earth of a battlefield ravaged and spent. Robin had always worn weariness like a scar. Like a grim affliction he'd long ago accepted to never shedding. "This is enough."

And suddenly, much too quickly, the air around Chrom became charged and weightless. He felt himself rise and watched Robin's shape grow lost in a void of white.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, the searing bright magic withered and blinked out, leaving Lucina dazed and squinting. She frantically willed her vision to return to her faster, expecting the remaining risen to take advantage of her temporary blindness. But...there was nothing. The ringing chaos that had bombarded her from all sides only moments before had seemingly winked out with the vanishing light.

They were gone. Not just the risen, but...

"...Father? Father!"

Finally her eyes regained focus, but they were met with almost nothing. Spinning around, she counted three bodies behind her. There was Severa, Gerome, and Laurent, all bleary eyed and a bit battered, appearing as confused as herself. _And all of them alive_ a quiet part of her breathed. But the rest was bare tile, fallen stone, and silence.

They were gone.

Lucina released a shaky breath she didn't remember holding. _Don't think about it. Not until you know it's over._ Naga's final gift had been an utter miracle that ignited a kind of hope and gratitude she could never fathom the description, let alone the repayal of. But it was spent. The bundled sense of renewed loss was anticipated and thus stubbornly refused, sent away to be unpackaged later. Duty first. She turned.

Darkness was growing. The sun had finally relinquished its hold on the day, but enough light remained to illuminate the figure of a man. He stood as if in contemplation not ten meters from her, bracketed by Ylisstol's broken landscape and the dying twilight. Body in profile, his eyes were held skyward and away from her. It could be no one else.

He didn't move; Lucina brandished her Falchion nonetheless.

"Damn him. And here I wanted to savour killing Naga's fledgling a second time."

Lucina hissed, "I would never let that happen."

A low laugh. The rumble of the dragon returned. Now the man lowered his eyes, returning her challenging glare with a biting smile.

"You know, the man formerly possessing this body loved your father. Would have died for him happily. In fact, those simple warp spells took what little will of him remained. Is that not quaint?"

Red. Fell.

Falling; like rain.

_"But these games shall now cease. Poor child...you so long for your father. Then allow me to reunite you...IN THE WORLD OF DEATH."_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by that exclamation of "I KNEW IT" I'm sure most of us screamed while playing Future Past 3 for the first time, when our little birdie briefly popped out of the jaws of that big scary dragon, still alive and still full of love.
> 
> Let me know if anything looks odd! Thanks for reading!


End file.
